If we read the Western Canon in order to form our social, political, or personal moral values, I firmly believe we will become monsters of selfishness and exploitation.

I won't say he [Shakespeare] 'invented' us, because journalists perpetually misunderstand me on that. I'll put it more simply: he contains us. Our ways of thinking and feeling-about ourselves, those we love, those we hate, those we realize are hopelessly 'other' to us-are more shaped by Shakespeare than they are by the experience of our own lives.

Criticism starts - it has to start - with a real passion for reading. It can come in adolescence, even in your twenties, but you must fall in love with poems.

Read deeply, not to believe, not to accept, not to contradict, but to learn to share in that one nature that writes and reads.

Sometimes one succeeds, sometimes one fails.

The art and passion of reading well and deeply is waning, but [Jane] Austen still inspires people to become fanatical readers.

Reading well is one of the greatest pleasures that solitude can afford you.